THE STORE OF THE FUTURE IS HERE: MOBILE SELF-SCANNING FOR A COMPLETELY UNATTENDED SHOPPING EXPERIENCE

Tuesday, 31 May 2022 07:54

Retailers with omnichannel and innovation strategies are focusing their attention to the mobile as the primary touchpoint. Through the mobile, not only the relationship with customers has higher fidelization potential, but Retailers can deliver services and enable new and customised shopping experience, seamless from online to instore and viceversa.

Customers are attached to their personal device, but as the latest researches indicated, even if buying online is a growing trend, they do not renounce to the search and selection of products in the store, especially for what concerns the food sector.

How to combine these two needs and make available the digital experience instore for the customer ?

Mobile Self Scanning service is the answer.
Mobile Self-Scanning is the digital shopping process consisting in scanning the barcodes of the products using the device’s camera, and adding them into the digital shopping cart. Even if it could seems just a switch from physical Self-scanning to the mobile, there are several additional advantages for customers and retailer that deserve to be underlined.

To the benefits related to the introduction of traditional Self-Scanning stations:

• less queue at the cash desks,
• increase the value of the average receipt,
• reduce the time spent inside the shop,

…there are others arising directly from the personal mobile device:

• these technologies on mobile version remove the customer’s contact with shared hardware, particular sensitive need in the post-pandemic.
• By using their mobile customers can get more information about the products, connect shopping lists, obtain discounts and personalized coupons based on their preferences, and even receive alerts regarding ingredients and allergens.
• Through the use of Mobile Self-Scanning retailers can collect additional data from their customers. In fact, it is possible to integrate the tool with various Mobile features and services, enriching general marketing actions (e.g. awareness, engagement, acquisition and conversion).
• The introduction of Mobile self-scanning in small stores, where there is not enough space for self check-in and check-out hardware infrastructure, can be the optimal solution for retailers.

The ways wherewith Retailers decide to redesign the purchasing process in the Self version are in fact diversified according to the spaces, hardware and software infrastructures available.
The Mobile Self-Scanning can also be provided through a dedicated App or integrated into a brand App that also includes other services, such as the store finder, flyers, loyalty card, rewards catalog, coupons and shopping list.

Mobile Self-Scanning services can be presented:

• as Hybrid, integrated with other technologies inside the store. The customer creates and manages his cart with his device but completes the payment operations at the traditional cash desk or self check-out desk;
• or as totally Digital, where payment is also performed inside the mobile device using a dedicated digital wallet, with high security level.

The digital form is the most complete and reliable choice for the store of the future. Similarly to the Amazon Go model, it gives a complete opening for the customer loyalty The customer, once inside the store, actives his service with a digital check-in, selects, scans and adds the products; at the end he pays with a few simple taps always using his device, leaving the shop without any interaction with the staff and totally bypassing the code. The customer receives an exit code and his receipt in digital format directly on his mobile. The experience is frictionless and unlike AmazonGo it does not require the introduction of cameras and RFID sensors, therefore much more convenient in terms of investment for the Retailer.

Looking at the system infrastructure, it is really agile and easy to implement: just a virtual POS is required in the store for both modalities. The server allows the receipt’s registration and keeps track of the shopping activity. Also the promotional data both on single product and on the entire shopping amount is returned and made visibile into the app interface. The same server hosts the typical control algorithm of Self-Scanning for random rereadings. No major investments are required in terms of network infrastructures, it is possible to use the services already present in the stores.

Recently we have been involved in the implementation of more than one project in large-scale grocery retail chains with some of our main customers both in the hybrid and digital form, which includes digital wallet. The analysis of the first results gives us indications for improving the various steps in terms of user experience, management and control of the receipt.

The digital transformation of the store with Mobile Self-Scanning follows totally the paradigms of omnichannel and Mobile first. Now is the right time to make this service available for your customers and bring your stores in the next generation. The future is now!

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Features and benefits of a point of sales designed for omnichannel

Tuesday, 26 January 2021 09:00

How to accurately select the digital sales system to optimize the ecosystem of services that the retailer can offer to its customers?

The digital point of sales, an evolution of the analogue cash register, consists of a series of hardware peripherals (POS, PC or tablet, scanner, printer, cash drawer and pinpad) and software that processes purchase transactions as well as manages the peripherals connected to it.

The transition from analogue to digital gives retailers a range of opportunities: simplifying operations, ensuring greater control and allowing them to implement an omnichannel customer relationship strategy.

What are the characteristics that a digital point of sales should have in order to be a useful tool for implementing business strategies and achieving the technological evolution of Retail?

• A Cloud Architecture to ensure scalability both in terms of the number of locations and in terms of new feature implementations. The cloud also provides a range of benefits related to security and centralized control.
• Open to integration with new digital services related to loyalty, promotional systems, smart payments and ready for future evolutions.+
• Natively multilingual, the language can be selected from the profile of each user.
• Ensure business continuity of sales, even in offline mode.
• Constant release of upgrades with easy distribution and installation, to stay always up with new regulations and technological advances.
• Versatility of the system in terms of hardware, which guarantees adaptability to the size of the stores (from single point of sales managed with tablet or smartphone stations, to chain stores that require more complex hardware solutions); versatility of the software in terms of the store concept (food, non-food and mixed).

There are several aspects to take into consideration when choosing a point of sales and all of them are of great importance for the good performance of sales processes and business growth.

Konvergence has been developing its KiaraCloud suite for years keeping in mind that these features must be included in the solution developed to create and maintain over time a scalable, flexible and integrated platform that offers retailers a tool that enables omnichannel strategies.

"We thought about a point of sales that would give the sales clerk a strong freedom of action and the retail manager a complete control, from any web access, for micro and macro data supervision."

Said Francesco Mignogna, Product Manager at KiaraCloud, and added:

"In recent years we have integrated KiaraCloud to several loyalty and CRM systems, such as Salesforce and Koncentro, and to many digital and smart payment systems. The almost 2000 Italian installations of the last year have confirmed the development strategy of the solution. The flexibility that we have given to our software allows us to offer a solution to the various needs of the market and users. We are constantly evolving and always ready for change."

Choosing a digital point of sales influences business growth because it has an impact on marketing strategies, on the quality of services provided and on the work of sales clerk.

Contact us to learn more.

We are going to talk about Smart Retail at Lumi expo 2019

Wednesday, 06 November 2019 14:03 System integration, IoT, technological innovation for the construction of Smart environments at the service of the citizen and the consumer are the main themes of the LUMI Expo 2019 event which will take place on 21st and 22nd November at Bologna Fiere.

We will be there and we will participate in the Talk Show "Technological Convergence, AV, IoT and Smart Data in people's everyday life experience", sharing our point of view together with other industry experts.

It will be a moment of aggregation and comparison to which we invite everyone to participate.

“LUMI expresses the supply chain of the system integration market. Represents the ecosystem that sees human at the center, from the closed space in which he works and lives (SMART BUILDING), to the built space, in which the person moves and interacts with the community (SMART CITY), up to the built landscape, where the individual becomes collective (SMART LAND). "

Retail is an integral part of this ecosystem and must be able to take advantage from the technological opportunities offering to its customers services and digital content in omnichannel mode.

The digital signage in the store is a valuable point of contact to give concrete meaning to the expectations that the customer has created online. It is necessary to reflect on how to best integrate digital content in the store based on business objectives and to make the shopping experience engaging and memorable.

You can find additional info and the free registration form HERE

French pharmacy sales with digital signage powered by Scala

Tuesday, 06 August 2019 08:50

The Scala-based digital signage networks push content to customers both inside and outside the retail outlet, and are boosting unique product sales by up to 80% for those pharmacies.

FUTURAMEDIA, a French company specialized in the rollout of dynamic signage solutions in the health and beauty retail space, has rolled out over 10,000 PoS screens in 2,500 pharmacies across France, supporting both queue management and upselling within the pharmacies. In addition, over 1,000 pharmacies have either rolled out or added the shop window screens to their network to support their branding, visibility and drive foot traffic into the outlet.

From day one, FUTURAMEDIA set up a multiple award-winning creative studio dedicated to the generation of content for these digital communication networks. A database containing information on over 15,000 products is at the disposal of the pharmacies, allowing their teams to organise their own tailored promotions via a Scala Content Manager web interface. The content manager also allows them to personalise the screens with pricing information and other information such as the weather forecast which is often sponsored by the pharmaceutical laboratories.

A recent study performed by FUTURAMEDIA and a pharmaceutical laboratory showed that a combination of both PoS and street-facing signage has the strongest impact, driving sales for a particular product up by 77%, with a rise in sales of 64% noticed by pharmacies using PoS screens only and nearly 50% for those using street-facing screens alone.

At Pharmacie Edgard Quinet in Paris XIV, also equipped with both solutions, the street-facing network is particularly effective: “The impact of the screen we have placed in our shop window is undeniable, its locaton is perfect looking out onto a very busy street and carrying very targeted content.”


Would you like to know more about Scala platform?

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Konvergence is now partner of OutSystems low-code platform

Friday, 28 June 2019 09:03

 

Konvergence established a distribution partnership with Outsystems, a PaaS (Platform as a Service) for web and mobile app development, to Deliver Custom Applications to italian Retailers

OutSystems platform simplifies every stage of the app development and delivery process. Visual modeling and an automated, one-click deployment approach to application delivery help reduce costs and enable continuous delivery without breaks in the lifecycle. Developers and teams can provide apps the business requires at the speed the market demands with:

• Rapid productivity: Create your apps and integrate in weeks, not months.
• Speed and code: Improve efficiency and accelerate speed by developing in a visual environment while retaining complete flexibility to integrate custom code.
• Multi-channel development: Develop an application that can run on any device or platform. Delivery time and risks are significantly reduced with error-free, automated deployments.
• Open platform: Protect your investment in large back-end systems by integrating with existing systems of record and data sources.
• Enterprise-grade platform: Build and manage very large portfolios of applications created by teams of developers just as easily and quickly as a single app.

Guerino Di Giacomo, R&D Manager in Konvergence has explained that:

“We chose Outsystems because we expect to significantly reduce development times and meet market demands faster and faster, improving performance and releasing new versions of our mobile and web apps more frequently.”

In addition to acquiring the platform, Konvergence has also entered into a distribution agreement and is following the entire certification process to reach the further levels of partnership envisaged.

If you want to find out more about Outsystems, don't hesitate to contact us!